Most foreigners who study in China know that grammar is the summarization of the language construction rules. It is a language rule system to build sentences and combine sentences into passages. As long as it related to the language rules or expression regular patters, it should be the contents of grammar teaching. Here “structure” is a generalized definition including syntactic structures, semantic structures as well as pragmatic structures.
In the following parts, some sentences are provided for students who study Chinese to illustrate the problems in grammar teaching.
① 他把酒没喝完。
② 他把酒喝醉了。
③ 一条河在我家前面，一座山在我家后面，一个学校在我家东面。
The three sentences above are all related to the rules and belong to the contents of grammar teaching. When learners study Mandarin Chinese, they often say Chinese sentences incorrectly like those above. The purpose of grammar teaching is to avoid students make such mistakes. Just as I said, it includes the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels as well as the structures and texts rules.
Sometimes, a sentence has no any errors in the aspect of sentence structure. However, it may probably wrong when you combine the semantic relation, designative characteristics and information focuses of the words. Let’s move the attention to the first sentence “他把酒没喝完”. In Chinese language school, teachers will tell you that the mistake is in sentence structure. In the “把” structure, the negative words should be placed before “把”. So it should be “他没把酒喝完”.
The mistake of the second sentence lies in the semantic level. The students who come to learn Chinese in China all know that the structure of the “把” structure is “subject+‘把’+object +verb+ complement”. This sentence totally obey this pattern but against the semantic conditions. Semantically speaking, the complement is to explain the object of “把”. But in this sentence, the complement “醉” explain the subject “我”. So it should be “他喝酒喝醉了”.
For the third sentence, it is the pragmatic mistake, which is often made by foreigners who just learn to speak Chinese. The subject in Chinese language should be specific, but in this sentence, the subjects “一条河” and “一座山” are nonspecific. So it is false. Besides, the topic of this sentence is “我家” and it should be placed at the beginning like “我家前面有一条河，（我家）后面有一座山，（我家）东面有一个学校。
The grammatical mistake is a common type in learning Mandarin Chinese process. In order to explain more detailed, two more sentences are listed as follows:
① 我们上个星期去杭州旅行了。我们游览西湖了，我们昨天晚上回来了。
② A：这个菜怎么做？
B：很简单，只有放在开水里煮一下，才能吃。
Sometimes, when we may think one isolated sentence is right. But when we put it into a certain context, it might be incorrect. It tells us that learners should learn Mandarin Chinese by putting the sentences into real language environment.
In sentence one, the teller has back, so the information point of the last clause should be “昨天晚上” by using the pattern “(是)…的”. Besides, teachers in Mandarin learning courses would tell you that “了” has the function of finishing the sentence when it placed at the end. So it should be “我们上个星期去杭州旅行了。我们游览了西湖，昨天晚上才回来的”.
The misuse of the conjunctive words is a common mistake when foreigners learn Chinese language. “只有…才…” emphasizes the essential condition while “只要…就…” stresses the sufficient condition. To coordinate with “很简单”, it should be corrected as “只要放在开水里煮一下，就能吃了”.
Accordingly, grammar teaching is very important in Chinese language teaching. Most mistakes are related to the grammar aspect, so teachers should attach more importance to the grammar teaching.